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High-speed rail (HSR) networks in China profoundly altered China's urban tourism spatial patterns. This paper examines the characteristics and evolution of spatial patterns of the urban hinterland before and after HSR network. Economic relation model and spatial analysis in ArcGIS were utilized on 338 national prefecture-level administrative units. The results show: (1) HSR strengthens tourism-based economic relationships between cities, and demonstrates a “corridor” effect of the spatial distribution of the change rates of tourism external economic relationships; (2) Center cities with larger tourism comprehensive scale are enhanced with expanding trans-province hinterland; the hinterland of central cities are enlarged, of which spatial linkages between the hinterlands are increased; (3) the competition and difference for the hinterland of central cities are intensified. Based on these, this paper proposes a tourism spatial structure with 19 urban agglomerations, 6 1st-class and 21 2nd -class tourist economic zones, and strategies for optimizing China's tourist space.

Traffic is an indispensable prerequisite for a tourism system. The “four vertical and four horizontal” HSR network represents an important milestone of the “traffic revolution” in China. It will affect the spatial pattern of tourism accessibility in Chinese cities, thus substantially increasing their power to attract tourists and their radiation force. This paper examines the evolution and spatial characteristics of the power to attract tourism of cities linked by China’s HSR network by measuring the influence of accessibility of 338 HSR-linked cities using GIS analysis. The results show the following. (1) The accessibility of Chinese cities is optimized by the HSR network, whose spatial pattern of accessibility exhibits an obvious traffic direction and causes a high-speed rail-corridor effect. (2) The spatial pattern of tourism field strength in Chinese cities exhibits the dual characteristics of multi-center annular divergence and dendritic diffusion. Dendritic diffusion is particularly more obvious along the HSR line. The change rate of urban tourism field strength forms a high-value corridor along the HSR line and exhibits a spatial pattern of decreasing area from the center to the outer limit along the HSR line. (3) The influence of the higher and highest tourism field strength areas along the HSR line is most significant, and the number of cities that distribute into these two types of tourism field strengths significantly increases: their area expands by more than 100%. HSR enhances the tourism field strength value of regional central cities, and the radiation range of tourism attraction extends along the HSR line.

Chinese railway has entered the “HSR era”, while the structure of “four vertical and four horizontal” railways for transit passengers is almost completed. Taking the Beijing- Shanghai High-Speed Rail (hereinafter referred to as HSR) as an example, this paper first explores HSR’s effects on the spatial structure of regional tourist flows using the social network analysis. Next, it notes changes in the accessibility of regional transportation. After analyzing the factors including initial endowment of regional tourism resources, hospitality facilities, the density of the regional tourism transportation network, and locations, the paper discusses the mechanisms through which HSR affects regional tourist flows. The study shows the following: (1) HSR’s effects on the spatial structure of regional tourist flows are manifested through the Matthew effect, the filtering effect, the diffusion effect and the overlying effect, and (2) the Matthew effect of HSR is manifested under an obvious interaction of the location, the initial endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and “time-space compression”. The filtering effect of HSR is manifested for those tourism nodes without favorable location conditions, endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, or tourist transportation network density and without obvious benefits from “time-space compression”. Those tourism nodes that boast advantages in terms of location condition, endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and obvious “time-space compression” will become sources for the diffusion effect. HSR will strengthen the aggregation effects of tourist flow in these diffusion sources, which will thereafter diffuse to peripheral tourist areas, manifesting “aggregation-diffusion”. HSR has overlapped tourists’ spatial traveling range over large-scale spaces. However, the overlying effect is only generated in those tourism nodes with a favorable location condition, an endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density, and obvious “time-space compression”.

By using the variation coefficient, Gini coefficient and Theil coefficient, this paper makes preliminary exploration of temporal-spatial change features and driving mechanism for regional differences of domestic tourism in China from 1995 to 2009. According to the results, we drew the following conclusions: (1) The regional difference of domestic tourism in China tends to be narrowing generally, and is less than that of inbound tourism, playing an important role in narrowing the overall gap of regional tourism in China. (2) The regional internal difference features: inter-provincial difference in the eastern region and difference among the eastern, central and western regions are comparatively obvious and demonstrate a significantly shrinking tendency, the change tendency is consistent with the change tendency of overall difference and exercises a decisive role in overall difference, whereas the inter-provincial difference in the central and western regions is small and relatively stable, having less infl...